


Spirited Conversation

by emjee (MerryHeart)



Category: Emma - Jane Austen
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, picking fights as an excuse to snog, post-fight snogging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23272555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MerryHeart/pseuds/emjee
Summary: “We understood each other from the first, I hope,” he said.“Of course. I should find matrimony dull indeed if we had to put aside all our spirited conversation.”
Relationships: George Knightley/Emma Woodhouse
Comments: 55
Kudos: 414





	Spirited Conversation

_I like to fuck with you just to make up with you._ \--Ariana Grande, "make up"

There was much to be said, Emma conceded, for perfect happiness. After the emotional tribulations of the previous year, the ease of her marriage, now six months old, was comforting as a salve is to sunburnt skin.

This did not mean, however, that she and Mr. Knightley did not occasionally return to a familiar tune.

“You cannot be in London Thursday next.”

“And good evening to you too, my love,” said Mr. Knightley, have returned from dining out after attending to business on the other side of the parish. He joined Emma on the settle before the fire. She did not lay aside her embroidery. “What is Thursday next?”

“The Churchills are coming for dinner.”

“Excellent. You enjoy having people to dinner. I look forward to hearing all about it upon my return.”

“It is their first trip down from Enscombe as a new-married couple.”

Mr. Knightley almost managed to conceal his smile completely, but Emma, glancing at him, caught sight of a dimple at the corner of his mouth. “My business in London has been fixed for some time. Could we not have them to dinner Friday?”

Emma shook her head as she worked a French knot on the corner of the handkerchief. “The Coles have engaged them for Friday.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Knightley, resting an arm along the back of the settle, “and you must have the Churchills to Hartfield before they grace the Coles’ dining table.”

Emma set the handkerchief aside and turned to glare at him properly. “No, I must have them to Hartfield before they are subjected to the Eltons, who have already secured them for dinner Saturday. Mrs. Elton spoke of it today—at some length, you might imagine—I was unable to avoid her at Ford’s.”

“As long as we have them to dinner, surely the order is of little consequence.”

“Little consequence!” She stood and crossed to the parlor window. It was beginning to rain—not one of the brazen but brief showers that are the calling card of an English spring, but a long, low wave of dark clouds that promised a storm that would last all night. Her father would fret, and she would look forward to falling asleep to the sound. “Little consequence, to subject Mrs. Churchill—” turning to face him, in spite of herself, “how strange it is to call her that, after a life of Jane Fairfax—” turning back to the window, “to subject Mrs. Churchill to the ordeal of Mrs. Elton before she may be properly received by her true friends at Hartfield?”

Mr. Knightley rose to join her. “Are you and Mrs. Churchill ‘true friends’ now?”

“Certainly more than we were! We correspond regularly, and I confess I am properly looking forward to seeing her.” Emma kept her eyes fixed on the garden, soon to be obscured by dusk and rain. “Do not pretend it is not a situation such as you have wished for for some time. I know you would have rather I attached myself to Jane than Harriet.”

“There’s no need to speak of that, Emma,” said he, with a sigh. “Mrs. Churchill was hardly ever in Highbury for long periods of time before last year, and I have long admitted—as you very well know—that Mrs. Martin is a very good sort of woman, and that I am fond of her.”

“You are fond of how she helps Mr. Martin manage the farm.”

“I am fond of competence, particularly in women. To wit, I married you.”

“Do not try to compliment your way into being allowed to keep your present business plans.”

“There shall be no ‘allowed’ about it. If I must to London, then to London I shall.”

“If it is because you do not wish to see Frank Churchill—”

“If I wished never to see Frank Churchill this spring, I should have to absent myself for a whole month together, I expect. This has nothing to do with him; I have set aside all my former resentment.”

“Have you indeed?” Emma cried, with such an expression as conveyed that she might not entirely believe him.

“What have I to resent? He is fortunate in his wife, I am more so—I cannot be considered to be speaking against Mrs. Churchill in praising my own domestic felicity, so do not think to suggest it—He is beloved and received in Highbury, I am beloved and reside here. In every respect I wish him happiness and yet count myself the luckier.”

“You are beloved,” said Emma, pressing his hand in hers, “and you do reside here, and as such I shall require your presence at dinner on Friday.”

“May a man not be master of his own movements?” he exclaimed, striding toward the door of the adjoining music room. Emma followed, somewhat perplexed.

“When he is a bachelor, a man may be,” she answered, “and I know you are yet accustomed to your independence, but you have spoken to me of duty at least as often as I have spoken to you of managing other people’s tempers, so consider the disappointment you, as master of Hartfield, would bring not only to the Churchills, but to the Westons and to my father, who always hates to see you from home, if you were not here to meet them on their first dining at Hartfield, even if you were to be present at every dinner for the duration of their stay. Why are you closing the door?”

“So that I may do this,” he said, turning back to her and capturing her mouth in a kiss so pleasantly overwhelming she rather forgot what she had been saying and why it seemed to have mattered so much. “You are a sight to behold when you are in state. I think you always have been. The flush on your cheeks is particularly becoming, especially when you are in the right. Of course I will delay going to London; it is the sort of thing that could be put off for half the summer, excepting I expect you would like fresh news of John and Isabella and the children before they depart for the seaside.”

“You determined to delay the first moment I mentioned it, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did. Call me Donwell’s master all you like, but I know that I am not the master of Hartfield, only married to its mistress.”

Hearing this so delighted Emma that she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him in a fashion that resulted in him being pressed against the closed door, his fingers in her hair.

“We understood each other from the first, I hope,” he said.

“Of course. I should find matrimony dull indeed if we had to put aside all our spirited conversation.”

“‘Spirited conversation!’ An apt phrase that would not have made a single appearance in my correspondence or your diary until a twelvemonth ago at the very most.”

Emma rolled her eyes and stopped her husband’s mouth with a contented, unhurried kiss.

“Don’t be absurd,” she said, when they were forced to take room to breathe. “You know I do not keep a diary.”

“Perhaps you should begin, the better to maintain your memory for corresponding with your dear friend Mrs. Churchill.” Mr. Knightley was once again trying not to smile, and doing a very poor job of it.

“I know exactly what I should say of this evening—twenty-third April. Rained after dinner. Had planned on quiet amusement before the fire with G. until supper, but was disappointed in these plans by his queer insistence on spirited conversation, during which he kissed me so single-mindedly that, while I own myself on the whole very pleased, I am sure he left my hair in such a state of disarray as was surely noticed by my father at supper.”

“You would note me as ‘G.’ in your diary?”

“I would soon tire of writing ‘Mr. Knightley’ over and over, as I’m sure you would figure in it very much, being both a great friend and my wedded husband. You certainly appear enough in my correspondence as it is.”

“Yes, I am sure Mrs. Churchill is quite sick of hearing of me.”

“If she is, she gives no sign—she always was fond of you, you know, and has mentioned several times how she always appreciated your kindness, given with such lack of presumption and such consideration of spirit, which I have always admired about you—and in any case, it is better for two people in the throes of nearly unbelievable happiness to have each other to speak to of it, so that they do not wear out their less fortunate, if still perfectly content neighbors. I will read any letter of Jane’s about Frank Churchill without complaint as long as she will read any letter of mine about you. Goodness knows I’ve built enough patience through a lifetime of hearing about Jane.”

“I believe I used to tell you that attending to Miss Bates’ reports of Jane Fairfax would improve your character.” He was smiling in earnest now, having completely given up on hiding how much he was enjoying the present situation.

Emma narrowed her eyes, even as her mouth twisted into an amused smirk. “You, Mr. Knightley, may stop talking.”

And stop talking they did, continuously, to the detriment of the neatness of both Emma’s hair and Mr. Knightley’s cravat, while the rain drummed lightly against the windowpane. They resumed their conversation only when they heard Mr. Woodhouse’s voice in the corridor.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, my lovelies. Hope this made you smile--we could all probably use a bit more fluff in this, the third month of 2020. Each month of this year so far has looked at the previous month and said, "hold my beer."
> 
> Come say hi to me on tumblr at je-suis-em-jee!


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